Vain hope! the time in which we could be intimidated has gone by. If it is justifiable to fear the opinion of those whom we deem juster and more intelligent than ourselves, it would be folly to be disturbed by those whose irrationality and injustice we feel able to demonstrate.
This double demonstration we are about to attempt, taking up one by one the arguments of these gentlemen.
1. Woman cannot have the same rights as man, because she is inferior to him in intellectual faculties, you say. From this proposition, we have a right to conclude that you consider the human faculties as the basis of right;
That, the law proclaiming equality of right for your sex, you are all equal in qualities, all alike strong and alike intelligent.
That, lastly, no woman is as strong and as intelligent as you; I cannot say, as the least among you, since, if right is founded on qualities, as it is equal, your qualities must be equal.
Now gentlemen, what becomes of these pretensions in the presence of facts that show you all unequal in strength and in intellect? What becomes of these pretensions in the presence of facts that show us a host of women stronger than many men; a host of women more intelligent than the great mass of men?
Being unequal in strength and in intellect, and notwithstanding declared equal in right, it is evident therefore that you have not founded right on qualities.
And if you have not taken these qualities into account when your right has been in question, why then do you talk so loudly of them when the question is that of the right of woman.
If the faculties were the basis of right, as the faculties are unequal, the right would be unequal; and, to be just, it would be necessary to accord right to those who made good their claims to the necessary faculties and to exclude the rest; by this standard many women would be chosen and an infinite number of men excluded. See where we end when we have not the intellectual energy to take principles into consideration! You have but one means of evicting us of equality; namely, to prove that we do not belong to the same species as you.
2. Woman, you add, cannot have the same rights as man because, as mother and housewife, she performs only functions of an inferior order.